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Park Jimin was not a man that believed in fairy tales. Despite the boyish aura that Jimin exuded, he was far more inclined to believe in the powers of hard work and determination. Dreaming for the sake of dreaming, without plans to execute steps to achieve said dreams, he considered to be a useless occupation of time.
In spite of his general lack of faith in anything he couldn't see nor create for himself, Jimin still pursued after what many would consider a rather fanciful dream. Jimin longed to be a dancer.
Dancing was, to Jimin, the source of his drive to better himself and his reason to wake up in the morning. It was the heat in his veins and the pumping of his heart, the electric shocks of pleasure bouncing through his brain. Dancing was his world, his everything, if he had to lessen the emotion by cheapening it to what mere words could express.
Days of part time jobs turned to months and years as Jimin trained tirelessly with studio after studio and auditioned for agency after agency. It was much to Jimin’s surprise that, after an endless stream of failures, he was finally offered an olive branch from the road of success in the form of Bighit Entertainment.
++
Jimin’s heart thundered throughout his form, each and every cell in his body aching for rest. But rest wasn’t something Jimin could allow, not when he was so very close to his first paid performance as a backup dancer. Though the performance was still a solid week away, Jimin powered through his rehearsals and continued well into wee hours each and every night. Long gone were the instructors and choreographers, long gone were the idols that Jimin was backing. Even Jungkook, Jimin’s roommate and an aspiring dancer himself, had long since gone to meet the ever-so-tempting mistress of sleep.
As the song ended, great breaths shook Jimin’s exhausted body in a grandiose attempt to replenish the energy he’d long since used. Tremors shook at Jimin’s knees as he unsteadily took a few sips of water. Just once more. Once more straight through without mistakes, and then he could finally pause for a few hours rest. Jimin’s song looped around once more as he took his opening position. Just as Jimin was about to start, however, he was struck by the most delicate of muffled sounds.
The faint melody of a cool crisp voice echoed through the cracks underneath the doorway to Jimin's practice room, tickling his footsteps and raising goosebumps across his skin. The voice was hypnotizing, rising in volume and deepening in pitch. Jimin froze. He stood for moments on end in awe, positively enchanted by the sweet rasp echoing throughout his soul.
Jimin hadn't noticed his practice track end. Neither had he noticed that his feet had taken control from him and chosen to head toward the sound of their own accord.
The song was blissful, soothing, a pleasant ocean wave beating against the sandy shores. Jimin's mind was clouded with calming waters and the delicate dance of sunbeams overhead. The warmth tickled his cheeks as the scent of sea spray crossed Jimin's nostrils.
Water.
Yes, Jimin wanted to swim in the water. Jump down deep into the ocean and behold the wonders that lie underneath the surface.
Yes, Jimin wanted to, no needed to, swim.
Jimin didn't notice when his feet brought him across the building of his own accord, nor when his hands gripped the doorknob and flung the door aside. His mind was overflowing with songs of the sea. It was only when the enchanting music ceased that Jimin's hazy mind began to clear and his feet gave way underneath him.
Something was cold. Cold and wet and hard. Tile, perhaps? Yes. Most definitely tile. Jimin groaned as he attempted to rise, but slipped once more in the puddle surrounding him. He shivered, blinking in an attempt to gain an understanding of his current whereabouts. Before Jimin could focus, however, he was enveloped in darkness once more.
Something soft and plush fell over him, obscuring his current view. Though the gesture of an evidently expensive towel was rather kind, Jimin felt the placement would be better elsewhere. Before he could finish raising a hand to remove it, however, a raspy voice cried out to him.
"Dont!"
"Huh?" Jimin voiced in confusion, raising his hand once more to remove the aforementioned towel.
"I said don't!" The voice demanded, a layer of urgency coating several mildly desperate undertones.
"Don't what? Remove the towel?" Jimin questioned, reaching a third and final time towards the towel.
"Exactly, just hold on, don't-"
The voice fell to silence as Jimin ripped the towel from atop his head, moving it to dry off his dampened chest and shoulders. The stranger held their breath as Jimin removed himself from the splash of water, taking the time to fully dry off. As he lifted his eyes to take a better glance at his surroundings, Jimin's jaw dropped.
Sitting in front of him, eyes locked and full of panic as he frantically attempted to dry himself off was none other than Min Yoongi himself. Min Yoongi, lead rapper in Bighit’s number one export: a rap trio known as Dischord. Min Yoongi, the very man whose rags-to-riches tale inspired Jimin to power through failed audition after failed audition and endure for the sake of his dream. Min Yoongi, the very man that may or may not have been the sole fixation of Jimin’s fanciful celebrity crush for the past three years. That Min Yoongi was showering just before him, staring wide-eyed at such an unwelcome intrusion.
The two boys froze, each eyeing the other in mild horror. Sitting upon a stool in the shower with a hair full of shampoo, Yoongi was in fact fully unclothed before Jimin's very eyes. Perhaps on any day at any moment prior to this one he would have been dreadfully embarrassed to walk in on his celebrity crush in the shower, but once it had actually happened? Well... Jimin didn't quite eye all that he was expecting.
Just below Yoongi's navel where a human pelvis would begin was instead the beginnings of iridescent scales shining underneath the fluorescent bathroom lighting. The scales formed a brilliant tail that no legend could have possibly prepared Jimin for.
“You… you have a tail!” Jimin gasped, unable to prevent the showing break in his voice.
“Yes. I believe we established that.” The horror in Yoongi's eyes fell to his typical indifference as he returned his focus to the various beauty products surrounding him on the shower floor.
“You're a… you're a mermaid!”
“Siren.” Yoongi tsked and returned to shampooing his hair despite the audience.
"So that... th-that was you? That's why I can't remember what happened after practice? Why I blacked out?" Jimin shook with the weight of the news, of the apparent proof in front of his very eyes that creatures of myth actually existed. His mind raced and his head thundered, causing a great disturbance that ached to his very bones.
Yoongi shrugged, turning the faucet back on and rinsing out his shampoo. "It works differently on every human. Some people remember parts of it, some don't. The important thing is that you won't remember it tomorrow."
Jimin rushed in closer, nearly slipping on a nearby puddle. "Wh-what do you mean? H-how can I possibly forget this? This is... this is crazy. Y-you won't... you really make me forget... will you?" His voice trembled under the additional weight of potentially losing his newfound knowledge. It was one thing to uncover a brand new world, but it was another to fall back into ignorance again.
Yoongi turned off the faucet with a lengthy sigh, picking up a bottle of conditioner and beginning to run it through his hair. "I have to. No one can know about this. That's the only way the secret can stay safe."
"B-but... I can keep it! I swear. I'll do anything... I-I'll cover for you when you need me to. I'll get you whatever you need I just... I can't lose this now that I know the truth."
Jimin wasn’t exactly known for being able to keep up lies for an extended period of time. He was too honest, too easily read, and far too socially awkward to pull off anything other than a mild bent truth. Jimin was determined, however, in his sleep-deprived state that he could for once follow through and keep a secret this large. For the sake of an honest memory, he could at least do that.
Yoongi, however, appeared to see straight through Jimin’s façade. With a sad smile and a shake of his head, he was humming once more. Jimin could faintly make out the word “Goodnight” as he quickly tumbled head over heels into darkness.
++
Garbled voices pulled Jimin from his heavy slumber, but his mind was still too murky from dreamland to process what was going on around him.
“I don’t know what he was doing there that late either, Namjoon, but when I found him he was passed out. What was I supposed to do, leave him on the floor all night?”
Passed out? Jimin had passed out? He lazily searched his hazy memory, but somehow couldn’t summon anything aside from practice itself. As he attempted to search further, his mind only grew to ache with a low thrum. Perhaps the voice was right. Maybe Jimin did pass out. But if Jimin passed out in the studio… where did the voice bring him to?
“You could have woken him up! You could have called someone! You can’t just risk our equipment with a complete stranger!”
Now that got Jimin’s attention. Equipment? Where was he? He was laying on something rather soft and plush, but apparently he was within reach of equipment expensive enough that the second voice, Namjoon, didn’t want him to mess with it.
“But nothing happened. I couldn’t wake him up so I brought him here so he wouldn’t freeze to death on the floor. I’m not a complete asshole, you know. And nothing was going to happen! I’ve been here almost the whole time anyway, and look at him. Anyone who practices until he passes out isn’t going to risk getting fired by messing with our stuff.”
“You’re the one that made the rule that no one else can come in here besides us in the first place. So what makes this kid special, huh? How is he somehow above the rules?”
The first voice, a gentle rasp, sputtered momentarily, before gaining its footing once more. “No, Namjoon, he’s not. He’s just a kid that I felt bad for. End of discussion.”
“Hmph.” Namjoon was evidently unsatisfied with the raspy voice’s answer. “You know,” He paused as if contemplating the weight of his words. “If you wanted to bring someone home, we could’ve made ourselves scarce for you.”
“Now wait just a-”
“Seriously. We’re all adults here. And you’re famous enough now that you don’t need to show them the studio for them to wanna bang you.”
“Excuse me?! I’m-”
“You’ve just gotta believe in yourself. You can pull anytime. Don’t worry about it. Just don’t bang them here.”
“We. Weren’t. Banging!” The raspy voice spat through his teeth, fury evident even to Jimin in his muddled mind state.
In an unfortunate nasal event, Jimin accidentally let forth a snort that not only brought attention to the fact that he was indeed awake; but also that turned the raspy voice’s rage towards him. Jimin wasn't aware of the blanket's sweet presence around him until he was suddenly unjustly lacking it. He grumbled, slightly shivering in the chilly studio air.
"If you're awake you can go back and sleep in your own bed."
Jimin blinked, groggily shifting into full consciousness. The first items to come into focus were a series of various recording equipment that were at a glance individually far more expensive than Jimin's entire net worth. Jimin shivered, turning from them and looking directly into the eyes of the man standing above him.
Though the eyes were the very same eyes Jimin had seen closely upon countless posters and tapings, in several dreams, and distantly at a few recent rehearsals, nothing could have prepared him for their depth and darkness up close and in person. Min Yoongi. Jimin couldn't help but to gape as Min Yoongi's eyes gazed into his, forming an unreadable and rather uncomfortable expression. Jimin heavily swallowed, begging a gentle blush not to form across his cheeks.
The second voice cleared his throat, momentarily breaking the delicate silence between them. Jimin whipped his head to view the source, Namjoon. Kim Namjoon, one of Yoongi's two partners in crime and apparently both amused and disgusted by Jimin's presence.
"Not to break up the love fest or anything, but please. Not on the couch, guys."
"We aren't-"
"Yeah, yeah, sure. Just not on the couch, please. We sleep there."
With a wicked grin and a wink, Namjoon left Jimin alone with a rather irritated Min Yoongi. Jimin swallowed once more. With a rather large sigh, Yoongi collapsed on the far side of the couch pinching the bridge of his nose.
Jimin's heart thundered as he eyed the man he'd harbored a not-so-secret crush on for the past three years. There was an odd sort of tension between them, one tinged with a melancholy Jimin couldn't begin to describe. Jimin looked down at his palms and offered the man an awkward smile. It was embarrassing enough that he was caught dancing until he passed out, but even more so that Yoongi had found him and cared for him. And Yoongi... the circles under his eyes indicated the great stress Jimin must have caused him.
Jimin sighed. "I'm sorry. I should have taken better care of myself... I should have just listened to Jungkook when he said I was overdoing it..." Jimin lightly gnawed on his bottom lip before he continued. "I'm sorry I kept you up. I... I can go... I won't bother you anymore... you can forget this even happened..."
Jimin jumped to his feet in a feeble attempt to escape, only to fumble in his movements and begin to tumble once more. Swift hands rushed to catch him, stabilizing him once more before gently placing him on the couch. The horror in Min Yoongi's eyes was so familiar it brought about a nauseating sense of deja vu, though Jimin couldn't begin to place how or where he had seen the expression before.
A nervous cough wracked his body, as if his body couldn't take the disparities between what Jimin remembered and his memories themselves. Yoongi's brow furrowed further as he placed the back of his hand against Jimin's forehead, then lowered it to check Jimin's pulse. Jimin shivered at the touch of cold fingertips against his throat, causing further alarm in Yoongi's already wide-eyed expression.
In that moment Jimin was positive that he was still dreaming, as none of the events so far in his day had begun to make any sense. Yoongi closed his eyes and rested his forehead against Jimin’s own, lightly humming a tune that seemed oddly familiar and yet uncannily foreign in Jimin’s ears.
In an instant, the throbbing in his head stopped. Jimin was once again called to depths of the sea, every fibre of his being desperate to swim. Though the salty sea air stung in Jimin’s nostrils, when he opened his eyes he found that his forehead was still pressed against Yoongi’s. Jimin blinked, his jaw dropping as each and every memory of the previous night began to return to his consciousness one by one.
Jimin fingers trailed up to Yoongi’s shoulders to shove the two of them apart. Jimin backed away as far as he could without falling off of the edge of Yoongi’s studio couch. “Y-you… y-you used your magic on me. Twice! Y-you stole my memory… you can’t just…” Jimin’s lip trembled under the weight of such wicked realization.
Though Jimin was clothed, he felt naked and powerless under Yoongi’s spell. A wave of nausea hit Jimin like the sea he felt so at home with during Yoongi’s song. Jimin gritted his jaw and leapt to his feet, the tension proving too much for him to process in such a confined area. Though Yoongi eyed Jimin with an expression of guilt and worry, Jimin shot him down with a furious glare that left no room for excuse or explanation.
Jimin slammed the studio door behind him, allowing it to echo in the hallway for good measure. If Jungkook caught Jimin’s outburst as he left the practice room and entered the hallway, he made no attempt to question it. Instead, he wrapped a friendly arm around the elder and led him off towards the cafeteria for some well-deserved breakfast. If either boy noticed a pair of eyes burning holes into the back of their necks, neither bothered to mention that either.
With Jungkook’s comforting arm around his neck, Jimin allowed himself to indulge in the barrage of thoughts raving about in his mind. Yoongi… Min Yoongi… he was a siren. His celebrity crush was a mythological creature. A fishman was hiding among them, masquerading as a human in order to perform as a rapper. A fish was a rapper.
Jimin snorted in the breakfast line as a mental image of a literal fish rapping on Inkigayo crossed his mind. The public would be quite a riot at such a sight. If they happened to see Yoongi’s tail, his beautiful glimmering iridescent tail, Jimin couldn’t begin to fathom the uproar it would cause.
Jimin distantly took to his eggs and fruit, mind otherwise occupied as he attempted to realize how true fairytales actually were. Jungkook’s attempts at conversation vaguely reached Jimin’s ear, but his consciousness was too far away to recognize them. Instead, Jimin was consumed with thoughts of the sea, and dreams of shining scales reflecting in the moonlight.
++
Another late rehearsal brought Jimin to Yoongi’s side for the second consecutive night. Though Jimin was vaguely cognizant of Yoongi’s power being used upon him, he lacked the ability to fight the tiptoe of his steps and to resist the alluring song of the sea.
Damp tiles greeted Jimin’s weary toes as Yoongi’s surprise greeted Jimin’s eyes. “You… what are you doing here? It’s late. You should be in bed already.”
“It was late last night too.” Jimin sighed, pulling up a nearby stool and taking a seat. If his form was so insistent on bringing him to Yoongi, then he wouldn’t fight it. Instead, the overwhelming weariness of a repeated life of late nights lessened the harshness of Jimin’s personal armor.
A sad smile decorated Yoongi’s cheek before he returned to his shampooing, delicately massaging his scalp under the cold water. “I wasn’t trying to summon you, you know. This time or the last time. I always try to wait to sing when no one else is in the building… and before you no one else has been up here this late.”
Jimin hummed in acknowledgment, rubbing at his heavy eyelids. His hazy mind proved far more forgiving that his conscious one. “Why sing at all? If it’s just going to expose you anyway… wouldn’t it be safer to just… not sing anymore?”
Yoongi’s heart visibly sank as his sad smile stretched further across his face. Jimin’s heart nearly sank as well at the sight of such a strong proud man seeming so incredibly small, brilliant supernatural tail aside.
“Wouldn’t it be safer for you to stop dancing? Less injuries, better sleep patterns, all that?”
Jimin’s brow furrowed, but he nodded all the same. “Of course it would. But… my life would be so empty if I didn’t risk everything to dance.”
“Same thing with me.” Yoongi paused, washing the remainder of the suds from his hair and allowing them to slip and slide down the drain. He turned to an array of facial products and began to apply the first of them. “Singing for a siren… it’s like Home. It’s like we’re back beneath the waves again with the rest of the shoal…” Yoongi let forth a sigh so heavy even Jimin felt as if he bore its weight.
Home. Jimin’s heart burned for Busan, for his family, a constant reminder of how far he truly had come. But Yoongi… Yoongi wasn’t even human. His home was far from the city, deep beneath the waves wherever and however sirens lived. Guilt tumbled in Jimin’s gut like bile, lightly stinging in acidity. They weren’t so different, Yoongi and himself, and Yoongi really had never meant Jimin any harm.
Perhaps… perhaps Jimin had been a tad too harsh in his reproach. Perhaps Jimin’s hardened heart had spurned a man that could truly understand him, despite their initial differences. Would Jimin have done any differently if he were Yoongi? Would he have risked getting poked and prodded in order to let the humans that found him keep their memories? Jimin shivered at the thought. Maybe… maybe with layers of exhaustion laying their souls bare before each other, maybe Jimin could possibly understand the man that had betrayed his naive heart.
“Are there lots of sirens hiding like you? Or are you the only one?”
Jimin’s question was perhaps a bit off-topic, but Yoongi eagerly snatched it up as the olive branch it was meant to be.
“There’s a few here and there. Probably more in Seoul than anywhere else.” A little grin danced a crossed his cheek and illuminated the gums therein. “The young ones always want to play human for a while. Technology is always more fun up here, anyway.”
“Young ones? So does that make you a young one too? Wait… how long do sirens normally live anyway? Are you secretly an old man?” Jimin’s curiosity got the better of him, bringing about the typically chipper and chattery demeanor he usually saved for moments at Jungkook’s side. “What kind of technology do sirens have? Can you make crazy waterproof stuff? Do you have all sorts of stuff that we don’t have?”
A brilliant gummy smile beamed under Jimin’s questioning, emitting a shine that could envy none but Yoongi’s own tail. Yoongi lotioned his torso as he answered question after question that Jimin threw at him, indulging the boy’s wonder at each and every opportunity.
“Well, for starters, we age pretty similarly to humans. So… I’m not actually an old man.”
Jimin snorted. “So you just act like one then.”
“Hey-”
“What about school? Do sirens go to school? What about sharks? Do you have to fight off sharks all the time?”
Yoongi burst into a fit of chuckles. “We don’t fight off sharks! They live in their parts of the ocean and we live in ours. You don’t really see, say, tigers running around in cities do you? It’s the same for sharks. They stay in their normal migration routes and we stay in ours.”
Jimin paused momentarily, absorbing each new piece of information into his utterly sleep-deprived mind. “So… sirens are like nomads, then?”
Yoongi shrugged, applying his final layer of facial moisturizer before turning off the shower faucet. “You could say that. Some of us go place to place in the sea, some of us stay around the same cities and come on land every once in awhile, and some of us live entirely on land. It depends on the siren, really. Kinda like humans.”
Jimin hummed, soaking in the information not unlike the sponges in Yoongi’s shower. “What about you? Have you ever lived in the ocean?”
Yoongi grinned, a plethora of metaphorical starlight shining in his eyes. “Not really. I’m from Daegu, born and raised. Some of my cousins and uncles live in the shoal just off the southern coast, so we visit sometimes. We used to go every year in the summer, but I haven’t been back since I debuted…”
The dark circles Yoongi’s facial routine desperately attempted to mask reappeared as he reminisced with Jimin. Empathy rang throughout Jimin's heart like a great church bell summoning churchgoers for mass. Unsure of where his sudden burst of bravery originated, Jimin stepped in closer and reached a hesitant hand out to Yoongi's head. He delicately ghosted Yoongi's damp hair with his fingertips, an odd gesture given the location and circumstance, but what Jimin hoped to be a comforting gesture nonetheless. Yoongi hummed, leaning into Jimin's touch and allowing his eyelids to flutter shut.
The two exhausted young men spent a few moments in comfortable silence before Yoongi cleared his throat and broke through their unspoken bond. "As nice as this is, I better get a towel."
As Yoongi grabbed the plush white towel and began to gently dry off his tail, Jimin cocked his head to the side, eyebrows raised in question. Yoongi winked and continued his pat down.
"My tail was drying out anyway. Besides, I figure that you don't really need to see me naked when I turn back. That's not really first date material."
Yoongi stuck out his tongue and raised an eyebrow in exaggerated provocation. A delicate blush dusted Jimin’s cheekbones.
“Wh-wha…?”
“I’m joking, kid.” Yoongi’s eyes twinkled with a shine not unlike the iridescence in his slowly-drying tail. As Yoongi neared completion in his drying regimen he splayed his towel out across his lap, obscuring anything that were to come into view once his human form returned.
“You should head out. Rehearsals start up again in a few hours."
Jimin gave Yoongi a fervent nod and a wary eye. A few silent moments passed between them, heavy eyes bearing the weight of a thousand unspoken questions. Yoongi chuckled, looking down as he watched his fins slowly shrink back and his scales regress. Jimin stared in wonder, jaw agape, as Yoongi's tail morphed into a pair of legs before his very eyes. Yoongi returned his gaze, sending a knowing smirk in Jimin's direction. Blush danced across Jimin's cheeks in a brilliant shade of rouge.
Once again, Yoongi chuckled. "Goodnight, kid."
Though Jimin's feet took heed of Yoongi's advice, his sleep-deprived vocal chords still managed to rebel in a single syllable.
"Jimin."
"Hm?" Yoongi stood, gently wrapping the towel about his midsection. "What did you say?"
The rouge managed to swim to a shade the depths of which Jimin had never known. "Jimin. My name is Jimin."